International real estate firm Hines has acquired a core office asset in Frankfurt for €114 mln from Tristan Capital Partners.
Hines executed the deal on behalf of the Hines Pan-European Core Fund (HECF), marking its second acquisition in Frankfurt.
Dubbed Werfthaus, the asset comprises 4,336 m2 of office space and 208 parking spaces at Frankfurt Westhafen. The building’s new anchor tenant is the online platform Check24. Barings Real Estate has acted as asset manager to date.
HECF fund manager Peter Epping said: 'We are very satisfied to have secured this attractive investment opportunity for our Hines pan-European core fund in an attractive and growing location in Frankfurt. Besides our existing asset Marienbogen, this is the fund’s second investment into the strongly performing Frankfurt office market.'
Daniel Reichwein, head of the Hines office in Frankfurt, added: 'Our aim is to continuously improve the value of the building.'
Werfthaus was completed in 2009 according to a design by architectural firm KSP Jürgen Engel.
Hines was advised by P+P Pöllath + Partners, Arendt, REC Partners and PWC. The seller side was accompanied by Greenberg Traurig, PWC and BNP.
Value-add fund raise
The news came as Hines revealed it was over the halfway mark in capital raising for its €1.25 bn European value-add fund 2 (HEVF 2). Some €637 mln has already been secured for this vehicle, close to the total of €721 mln that was raised for fund I.
Paul White, HEVF 1 and HEVF 2 fund manager, said: 'The pace and quality of our deployment of the first HEVF value-add fund led us to accelerate the anticipated launch of the follow-on fund.
'HEVF 2 will closely follow the philosophy of its predecessor, prioritising skilled asset-level value creation in prime locations of Europe’s most institutional city markets.
'We expect that HEVF 2 will be almost twice the size of HEVF 1, to reflect the strength of the opportunity pipeline the Hines platform is able to originate, and it is anticipated to be Hines Europe’s largest closed-ended fund to date. That clearly demonstrates the firm’s emphasis on this flagship value add series.'
Hines has secured and signed two seed assets for the fund in recent weeks, namely a value-add office opportunity in Munich and a residential rental scheme in Madrid, Spain. A third acquisition, this time a mixed-use office/retail project, has since been taken into exclusivity in the West End of London. The total equity allocated across the three deals is €300 mln. Further acquisitions are expected in early 2020.
